* Posts by anonymous boring coward

3229 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jan 2015

Software gremlin robs Formula 1 world champ of season's first win

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Some simple subtraction, in-head, would give the answer, no computer needed.

Pathetic.

Recording Industry Ass. says vinyl and CD sales beat digital downloads

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Re: Oh dear,....

Funny about the bass, because you can’t hear bass direction anyway.

What do cables have to do with LP, CD, mp3, FLACK or the price of tea in India?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Rather than replying to anyone, and starting a flame war, I’m just going to say:

A well mastered, not compressed to death and ruined by shit sample rate conversions and jitter, master cut to LP will sound far superior to a CD with a sh*t loudness war master.

The problem is usually the mastering, but LP or tape will be at least as satisfying as any CD can be if operating at their full potential. Most people have never heard good LP or tape, and never will. Heck, most younger people today have never even heard a decent Hifi (or Stereo, as we used to say).

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Re: Availability

You are probably right, but let's test this theory anyway!

Mention a few of those things, and I'll check if they are available streaming!

(I'm just curious. I have LP, tape and CD here as well.)

Meet the open sorcerers who have vowed to make Facebook history

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

A vaguely related question:

Wasn’t the original Facebook ad-free?

Also, didn’t the Big Zucker say, at the time, that FB would never have ads?

I don’t use FB, but doesn’t it have ads nowadays?

SpaceX blasted massive plasma hole in Earth's ionosphere

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“The researchers estimate that the SAW blasted electrons away, causing the total electron content - the concentration of electrons along a one-meter squared region - to deplete by as much as 70 per cent.”

Where did all those electrons go?

Facebook's inflection point: Now everyone knows this greedy mass surveillance operation for what it is

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Re: People will forget...

"a tiny majority"

I guess you meant "minority"?

I think it's a minority too, but probably not a tiny one.

However, the most active users will probably let their addiction rule over their sense. Besides, they already "did the deed", so why quit now?

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This is an 'aha' moment for a lot of people, most importantly, for a lot of regulators and legislators.

For a lot more people than that, this is not an 'aha' moment. They are simply way to thick for that.

UK watchdog finally gets search warrant for Cambridge Analytica's totally not empty offices

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I have a fiver that says that CA has worked for the Tories, but it will never come to light officially.

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In any event, unlike virtually all other search warrants, warrants issued under Blighty's Data Protection Act must by law, in most circumstances, require those on the receiving end be given seven days of notice of the intended swoop in writing, and be given a chance to argue against the warrant if they so wish.

Brilliant! Only in the UK...

One also wonders what they could achieve in 7 hours on the premises?

Unless they took hardware with them for forensic analysis off-site?

They really are looking for evidence that the data was recently wiped. Not the actual data.

Fleeing Facebook app users realise what they agreed to in apps years ago – total slurpage

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: How is it possible that an app

"Unless users clicked a "grant permission" button, in which case why do they blame the app?"

These permissions are bundled together and "essential" for the app to work at all.

Users are conditioned to allow it all, or they won't be able to use the apps.

There used to be a relationship of trust between users and software companies. This is now down the drain, thanks to Google, Facebook and the like. Lawmakers still seem extremely behind the curve, decades after the IT revolution took off.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

I'm surprised Google isn't being chastised yet for actually allowing all this slurping.

They have the APIs in Android. They seem to allow any app to request any amount of access, incorrectly assuming that the user understands the implications and rejects apps that asks for too broad permissions (or, more likely, Google just don't care).

The contrast with Apple's model is very stark -but then again, Apple makes money from the device purchases, app sales, and services sales. Not from the user's data.

Drone collisions with airliners may not be fatal, US study suggests

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Re: Think Falconry

"And are quite happy to be roosting all over the buildings on days that they know the falcon won't be present. So we had to start an irregular schedule"

That's amazing! Pigeons having some kind of concept of week days!

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Chicken cannon

" By rough calculation* I make it an 850m free fall to hit 250kts (463kph)"

That would be a very impressive vacuum chamber!

Terminal Velocity in a 1 bar atmosphere for a drone is probably not very high.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: How can this be?

"Why are there no pictures of drones near planes?"

Because you would be passing them at 250mph+, perhaps?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: How is this different than birdstrike?

"The design basis for an engine is to "survive" ingesting one of its own fan blades, which poses much more interesting materials challenges to downstream equipment than bones or metal and plastic bits."

And yet a few geese knocked out both engines on that Hudson plane.

If a drone could knock out several blades, which then, obviously, get ingested, we have a situation.

I guess the actual result would depend on what bits the drone contains, and where they happen to hit the blades. Perhaps the drone is carrying a camera, with a titanium mount and some other metals.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Of course it "may not be fatal".

But it also "may be fatal".

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: How can this be?

"How can it possibly be that a tiny little lightweight machine might bounce right off a big heavy machine, leaving little trace but a couple of chips on the paintwork? Who'd a thunk it?"

You don't really know what you are talking about, do you?

BOOM! Cambridge Analytica explodes following extraordinary TV expose

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

I don't think "fair" and "expected" are the same thing.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Given the various weird fantasy claims (complete fabrications) broadcasted by Fox etc about Hilary during the election campaign, it would be interesting to find out how many of them were actually dreamed up by CA (including Bannon).

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: politicians enraged

"Who knows, perhaps we'll all get national IDs out of this ridiculous storm in a tea cup..."

You can't seriously have bothered to find out what CA is up to...

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"Anyone want to guess the odds of whether Facebook still exists at the end of the year?

And no, I don't mean bad publicity alone will sink them. I mean a combination of lawsuits, criminal charges, investors pulling out, advertisers leaving in droves, etc."

I wish. But I don't think this will happen. FB will paint this as themselves having been wronged by CA. Their complacency with GSR's usage/slurping of FB data will be portrayed as them having been hacked (with social engineering applied to some of FBs administrators).

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Too Late

"The interesting thing is that CA are only behaving as a state actor's equivalent State Security organisation would behave, without oversight, all of the time."

There is no "only" about it. It's a private firm, not a state organisation.

State organisations may look like they have no oversight, but there is internal accountability running to the government. (Flawed, of course, but at least it's supposed to be there.)

Entities like CA are more dangerous than state organisations (assuming we are talking about those of democracies).

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Short Memory Syndrome

"Chapter III - Everybody acknowledges the Era of Zero Privacy* and moves on."

A lot of younger "adults" have already stated that they don't care. They are addicted to social platforms and all kinds of privacy intruding services, and don't care how this is used to bend their feeble minds.

We need laws and enforcement of the laws before we have these morons completely in the hands of the likes of Nix (or Trump, or Bannon).

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Always thought CA seemed very fishy, but could never have imagined they they were trying to set up as a complete for-hire NSA-CIA hybrid. A decade down the line they would have had their own hit squads, most likely. Perhaps they already have...

Scary sh*t!

2 + 2 = 4, er, 4.1, no, 4.3... Nvidia's Titan V GPUs spit out 'wrong answers' in scientific simulations

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: This might be the best thing since sliced bread

What is this mysterious thing called an "ASIC"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit#History

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"All in all, it is bad news for boffins as reproducibility is essential to scientific research. "

Being correct also ranks pretty high.

Being wrong in the same way every time, not so much.

NHS Digital heads accused of being 'suppliers', not 'custodians' of UK patient data

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"1984"

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The post is required, and must contain letters.

Maplin shutdown sale prices still HIGHER than rivals

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: AA rechargeable batteries were always good value

Aren't most rechargeable AA and AAA batteries 1.2V instead of the 1.5V from disposable batteries?

That's why many gadgets complain that the batteries are low very soon after putting them in, but keep on going for a long while anyway.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Never understood their pricing.

It's a Radio Shack type outfit. And they try to sell HDMI cables, Firewire cables, etc, at 20+ pound prices..

Why would one even go in there any longer? We already have Currys etc to try to rip us off -but that's in conjunction with selling large TVs etc, so that rip-off cable will seem less pricey (mind already numbed by paying 1000+).

A store mainly selling accessories can't have rip-off prices on accessories.

Fermi famously asked: 'Where is everybody?' Probably dead, says renewed Drake equation

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Re: Not useful

We will NEVER 'consume all our resources'.

Perhaps not. But we might consume all resources that we can realistically make use of.

And we may poison our environment while doing so to the extent that we expire as a race.

And we may alter the climate of the planet to the extent that we expire as a race.

We may just end up being an ultimately short-lived and not very successful experiment in large-brain creatures with dexterous forelimbs (vs. for example thick skin, sharp teeth, massive jaws, superior immune system, low metabolism).

Bad blood: Theranos CEO charged with massive fraud

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Pretty face, ugly brain.

Swiss see Telly Tax as a Big Plus, vote against scrapping it

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Re: Commercial TV is also a mandatory tax...

Don't worry. The BBC is far from the independent watchdog that it is supposed to be able to be.

You'll have to look outside the BBC for any real sharp critique of the government. BBC has been thoroughly declawed. Meek as hell.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Basic maths?

"And bearing in mind that game shows are about the cheapest to make, what would they replace them with?"

A test picture would be an improvement.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Good Value

"Er, dude, a fair amount of content on Netflix was originally created by the BBC."

So you are paying for it twice? Because that's what you are saying.

And Dr. Who and Sherlock? BBC is just a melting pot of fresh new ideas, isn't it?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: And in other news...

However, if you can read, why do you need TV news?

I find it a massive waste of time sitting waiting for some talking head to tell me the news, as prioritised by them. It's more like propaganda due to the selection process.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Short term vs long term

"They've paid for Blue Planet"

You know they sell these things to other providers, right?

It's not as if we get the right to get the 4k discs at cost just because we actually payed for the production of the stuff..

Why, BTW, doesn't BBC let us have access to the complete archive of older stuff?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Foreigner Tax

What do we need?

Didn't BBC just cancel the subscription of Met Office data? (Seems they tried to to save a little money, but had to go back due to the alternative being completely shit. Gives confidence in BBC, doesn't it?)

We sure as hell don't need BBC paying 100k-400k salaries to people.

The BBC has proven mostly useless the last decade, with light entertainment crowding out everything that the BBC should be doing.

I'd say keep BBC, but slash it's funding into half -meaning half the licence fee.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Holy fragg! Those Swiss are loaded!

Opportunity knocked? Rover survives Martian winter, may not survive budget cuts

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

"why does a rover need new flight control software"

It's been trying to escape for some time now.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Friendly atmosphere?

"THERE MUST BE SOME KIND OF ATMOSPHERE ON MARS"

It's all a conspiracy, I'm telling you man!

Perhaps read up a bit before jumping to conclusions?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: 2 years Opportunity = Trump's new gin cabinet

"P.S. I read that as ruining the country."

Same thing.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Give it away.

Another question is how on earth it can cost so much?

Just slash the budget to 1/10 and keep running it.

UK.gov: Psst. Belgium. Buy these Typhoon fighter jets from us, will you?

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Re: Defending the continent against potential Russian aggression

West German armies didn't roll into East Germany. Absolutely no similaritry with Crimea.

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Re: Not quite, Jason Hindle

And Lockheed-Martin was allowed to beat out Boeing in a bizarre exceptionally expensive competition for the next generation fighter.

Google reveals Edge bug that Microsoft has had trouble fixing

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Re: One should note, that it was Microsoft who wrote this bug

Free web browser? You're kidding, right?

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

MS didn't prioritise it high enough.

And now they try to act the poor hard working company being wronged by Google doing what they promised from the start.

Only MS is to blame in this instance.

*Wakes up in Chrome's post-adblockalyptic landscape* Wow, hardly anything's changed!

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

I removed Adblock after it turned out it slowed things down more than the actual ads. POS implementation. NoScript is my main weapon at the moment.

MPs: Lack of technical skills for Brexit could create 'damaging, unmanageable muddle'

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Re: But it will be worth it

"And we will compete. That has rarely ended well for Europe."

The utter delusion just goes on and on. Completely blind, are we?

Kentucky gov: Violent video games, not guns, to blame for Florida school massacre

anonymous boring coward Silver badge

Ironically the video game industry is most likely much more profitable than the gun industry, but with much worse lobbying.